Data stored in an implant will be called hereafter “implant data”. The implant data can be read by means of a programmer remote to the device using telemetry techniques that are in themselves well-known in the art.
The programmer typically cooperates with the implant to transmit the implant data from the device to a remote computer that will process the implant data and present the data in a form suitable for display on a screen, or for printing, e.g., a list of data and/or a graphic display. The processed data thus is presented to help the practitioner to analyze the history of the clinical data of the patient, and the operation of the pacemaker, over a period of several days or several weeks. The interpretation of such implant data will enable the practitioner to make a diagnosis.
Various techniques to assist the practitioner in making a diagnosis, allowing for an elaboration of the synthesis data starting from the raw implant data read from the implant, are known. One technique is, for example, the AIDA software (“Aide à l'Interpretation et au Diagnostic Automatiques” (Assistance to the Interpretation and to the Automatic Diagnosis)) available from ELA Medical, the assignee hereof. The functionalities of this AIDA software are described in the article by Limousin et al., “Value of Automatic Processing and Reliability of Stored Data in an inplanted Pacemaker: Initial Results in 59 Patients”, PACE; 20[Pt.I]:2893–2898 (1997). It will be noted that the present invention is not directed to the way in which the synthesis data are elaborated, which techniques are known to persons of ordinary skill in the art, nor to the diagnosis itself, which is made by the practitioner using the data synthesis elaborated by the software. The known techniques for performing the elaboration of the implant data into synthesis data are typically performed by expert systems (not forming apart of the present invention) such as a percentage or counts of events.
The elaborated synthesis data, in practice, are presented to the practitioner in the form of a series of screen pages, as illustrated, for example, on FIG. 1. A first series 10 of screens includes a display screen 11 having various statistics in a list as well as the evolution over time of the heart rate, i.e., a graphic chart of the raw implant data recorded in the implant. A screen 12 makes it possible to display a certain number of text messages and graphs to assist the diagnosis, i.e., elaborated synthesis data, for example, provided by a software program or functionality such as the software AIDA referred to above.
A second series 20 of screens illustrated in FIG. 1 makes it possible to display information relating to more particular aspects, for example, a screen 21 for the episodes of atrial tachycardia, a screen 22 for the atrio-ventricular intervals, and a screen 23 for the episodes of ventricular tachycardia.
Lastly, a third series 30 of screens provides more detailed information on particular aspects, such as the atrial context, the atrial intervals, the ventricular context or the ventricular intervals (respectively screens 31 to 34).
This organization of the displayed data is certainly very complete, since it makes it possible for the practitioner to reach a large amount of information and permits a fine (detailed) analysis, but it also presents the disadvantage of obliging the practitioner to consult multiple specialized and complex screens, requiring a lot of back-and-forth between different screens, all of which are complex.
This inconvenience is even greater for those practitioners that are not very familiar with the use of the software, in particular, those who must work with several different software programs (and there exist as many software program as pacemaker manufacturers), or the cardiologists, who are typically less specialized in the analysis of the implant data than the electrophysiologists, but who desire to be informed of certain recorded data to help them in a clinical diagnosis of the patient, to try, for example, to find certain revealing signs of a particular pathology.